How Homing Pigeons Navigate

Posted by timothy on Monday February 9, 2004 @12:17PM from the as-the-bird-flies-is-tautological dept.

goombah99 writes "Over the years there has been much research and speculation on how homing pigeons navigate. The assumption has been they need some novel sensory mechanism to give them north-south orientation information. Theories included magnetic field sensitivty and polarized light sensitivity, other possibilies include analysing the motion of the sun. But British researchers appear to have cracked the case: they follow roads and landmarks and don't require special senses. Birds, it seems, actually follow the longer as-the-dog-walks path of the road, even circling over round-abouts rather than the straight 'as-the-bird-flies' path one would expect if they used absolute position sensing."

3 of 51 comments (clear)

Re:Obligatory... by fredrikj · 2004-02-09 12:25 · Score: 5, Funny

Or now we know why Google's search results are so good.
RFC 1149 by Garridan · 2004-02-09 12:36 · Score: 5, Funny

So THAT explains why my connection always gets so laggy when there's construction on the roads!

http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1149.html
Thats not what the article says. by Captain+Rotundo · 2004-02-09 12:41 · Score: 5, Informative

The (very short) article says that the birds will home in the firsttime a flight is done using thier own "navigational system". It does say after many flights they settle in on a routine path, that tends to follow roads. As if (big surprise!) its easier to follow the landmarks that to use that "navigational system".

Once again the slashdot blurb completely misrepresents the article. Good work guys :)